Not all love stories are gentle. Paul Andrew Williams returns to the Edinburgh International Film Festival with what may be his most emotionally direct film to date. Dragonfly brings together two of the UK’s finest actors — Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn — in a quiet, contained story that begins with warmth and genuine connection, and slowly evolves into something much darker and more affecting.

At first it feels deceptively simple: two neighbours notice one another from opposite sides of a fence. One lives alone and keeps mostly to herself. The other reaches out. Slowly, carefully, a connection begins to form through ordinary conversation and small acts of care. Then, midway through, a sudden event forces a shift in tone — not towards horror in the genre sense, but something raw, unsettling and painfully believable.

Williams says the heart of the film lies in these seemingly insignificant gestures — “When she lifts the sheet on the bed and it’s perfectly made… she smiles. That’s the heart of the movie.”
It’s a film where a single glance or gesture carries as much weight as a plot twist.

By the end, Dragonfly leaves a very particular after-taste. It doesn’t moralise, but invites the audience to look again — at people, at assumptions, and at how easily we can affect other people’s lives, for better or for worse. Rather than offering easy answers, the film simply lingers, asking us to look again at people we might otherwise overlook.

Three words → Home. Grown. Alone.

^{Content Warning : Animal cruelty or death, Blood, Classism, Death and dying, Suicide, Swearing, Violence}